BS Detector List: Facebook Fake News Filters

If you haven’t heard yet about Facebook’s fake news problem, you should turn off Netflix once in a while. There’s real life happening out there.

Mark Zuckerberg says that it’s not Facebook’s job to decide what is or isn’t newsworthy, so the hope that FB is working on a real solution may be a little thin.

Enter: the B.S. Detector. It’s a browser plugin that slaps a big red warning label on any link pointing to unreliable news sources and again on the website itself once you get there.

Update 12/5/16: I heard from Dan Sieradski, the plugin’s primary author, and he’s working on tons of improvements. In the meantime, this post has been updated with a more current list. The most notable change to me is the addition of the “Clickbait” and “Proceed with Caution ” labels, and the relabeling of Wikileaks. See below.

This message is displayed on Facebook below any link to 500+ fake-listed websites.

This message is displayed at the top of every website on the list of 500+ plus “fake news” websites.

The plugin and its objective—warn people about fake news websites before they read it—are excellent. But it begs a few questions:

Who’s on the list?

How do they get added to the list?

What are the criteria for being on the list?

Who made the list?

I don’t have answers to all of those questions, but here what the plugin’s primary author, Daniel Sieradski, has to say:

The list of domains powering the B.S. Detector was somewhat indiscriminately compiled from various sources around the web. We are actively reviewing this dataset, categorizing entries, and removing misidentified domains. We thus cannot guarantee complete accuracy of our data at the moment.

Who’s on the BS Detector Facebook Fake News list?

The list is always changing, but as of 12/3/16, there are 559 websites listed, broken into 8 categories:

Fake News — Sources that fabricate stories out of whole cloth with the intent of pranking the public

Satire — Sources that provide humorous commentary on current events in the form of fake news

Bias — Sources that traffic in political propaganda and gross distortions of fact

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